This study investigates the linguistic characteristics and interaction between linguistic complexity and accuracy in the essays of three different genres written by 119 Chinese non-English majors. Results indicate obvious cross-genre differences in linguistic characteristics, with argumentative essays exhibiting the highest syntactic complexity, narrative essays the highest accuracy, and descriptive essays the highest lexical diversity. Syntactic complexity has a significant negative correlation with accuracy across three genres, suggesting a trade-off effect between the two components. Stepwise regression analyses reveal syntactic complexity and lexical complexity as significant predictors of accuracy within the same genre, but syntactic complexity shows stronger predicting power. The results of this study provide some implications for teaching genre-based college English writing in China.